Bunscoill Ghaelgagh

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bunscoill Ghaelgagh

Established	2001
Type	Manx language primary school
Headteacher	Julie Matthews
Location	St John's Isle of Man
LEA	Isle of Man
Staff	c. 4
Students	46
Gender	Mixed
Language	Manx
Website	Bunscoill Ghaelgagh web site

Bunscoill Ghaelgagh is a Manx language primary school in St John's on the Isle of Man. St. John's is the ancient home of the Isle of Man parliament which still meets annually on Tynwald Hill (illustrated). The children go on to the Queen Elizabeth II High School, in Peel, where GCSE Manx is offered from the age of 12.

Bunscoill Ghaelgagh is the only school in the world where children are taught their lessons solely in Manx and allows children to learn the language fluently.^[1]

1 History
2 Manx language
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

In 1999 a parents' society (Sheshaght Ny Paarantyn) was formed that approached the Department of Education requesting the provision of a Manx language school. The school opened with one class in September 2001 sharing premises at Ballacottier School in Douglas. In January 2003 it moved from Ballacottier to its own building in the old St John's School.^[2]

The school won the annual Reih Bleeaney Vanannan award in January 2006 because of its efforts for all things Manx — language, culture and heritage. It was presented by the then Speaker of the House of Keys Tony Brown, chairman of the Manx Heritage Foundation.^[3]

[edit] Manx language

The school is considered successful and is part of the Manx language revival.^[4]^[5] Even Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Ealish ayns Cheer ny Yindyssyn) is read in translation after 30 copies were presented to the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh by the Manx Gaelic Society (Yn heshaght Ghailckagh) when the book was officially launched.^[6]

The school itself refers to studies that have been made in Finland that demonstrate advantages from bilingual education.^[7]

Researcher Aini-Kristiina Jäppinen examined the achievement of 334 pupils in 12 schools on 'content and language-integrated learning' programmes and compared them with 334 pupils studying only in Finnish. She concluded that a foreign language adds to the learning process and seems to improve results.^[8]

When pupils have to conceptualise and grasp issues in a foreign language as well as their mother tongue, it will help develop an ability to understand complex and multifaceted relationships between various themes,' ^[8]

Interestingly for a Manx school, the Finnish research used students who were studying three different languages (French, Swedish and English) and found that the "the choice of (Second) language did not seem to have a major impact on performance" in a number of subjects including maths and geography. As the school notes this conclusion is not universal to other previous studies. Studies at Luton University have shown that there can be a "trivial" delay in language development but the overall benefits in the long run outweigh this temporary disadvantage.^[9]